2013 Young Investigator Award
Assistant professor of Zoology at Oklahoma State
University, Dr. Michael “Michi” Tobler is the 2013 Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award winner.
His research interests vary across a wide range of questions including the evolution and maintenance of sex, genital evolution and sexual conflict in live-bearing fishes, as well as geographic variation and systematics of live-bearing fishes and cichlids in Central America. His current research predominantly focuses on the interplay of adaptation and speciation in extremophile fishes.
Dr. Tobler has won multiple awards over the course of his career thus far, including The Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities, The Stoye Award of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and the Willi Studer Award of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Dr. Tobler graduated with a Ph. D. from the University of Zürich in 2008 and spent over two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Texas A&M University, before accepting a position with Oklahoma State University. He was also the Young Investigator Award winner for the Oklahoma State University Chapter of Sigma Xi in 2012, prior to winning this award on the Society’s international level.
Since 1998, the annual Young Investigator Award recognizes excellence in research and includes a certificate of recognition and a $5,000 honorarium. The recipient is invited to present a lecture at the Sigma Xi Annual Meeting or other suitable occasion.